The wild enthusiasm I displayed for Christmas as a child has slowly petered to a stage where I am awake on Christmas day at 2:22am, perusing various websites related to Richard Dawkins and Carl Sagan. A fervent atheist since her days at Catholic school, my sister said it best about what Christmas has to give to us secular folk when she came over today to watch carols, and that is the ability Christmas has to bring families together and spend time with each other. Of course, we shouldn't need a celebration borne from one particular religion in order to make time for our loved ones, but seeing as for the time being that Christian beliefs are so entrenched in Western society, the fact that Christmas is a public holiday does make gathering and reunions a lot easier. If you can't change the status quo overnight, use it to your full advantage.
So why the Dawkins and Sagan? I first came across Dawkins back in 2007 when I read The God Delusion, which he published a year earlier, and he did crop up a fair bit in my history of philosophy and reason subject earlier in the year, but I can't thank Zen Pencils enough (is this probably my... third plug? of the website on this blog) for making me aware of one Carl Sagan, who's enormous amounts of work I am yet to properly browse. Always mildly annoyed that I feel restricted from expressing secular thoughts (as previously written about here) I committed a rather non-confrontational, passive aggressive retaliation to the religious Christmas status updates occasionally peppering my Facebook newsfeed by liking the official Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science page an hour into Christmas. This in turn just got me into thinking about religion in general.
This article from the website is certainly controversial and I do not agree with the way it has been written - sexual abuse is not something I find easily comparable in the sense to say that it is more or less serious than other kinds of abuse. As one commenter rightly pointed out, different forms of abuse will have different effects on children. What stuck with me was the explored impact of what it is like for children to be introduced to concepts of heaven and hell, and that non-believers of their faith are condemned to the latter. This caused my mind to wander back to an msn conversation I had in primary school, with a friend who remains close to me to present day, who also happens to be a devout Christian and let's just say that this friend showed a very persistent... inclusive spirit when were younger, but thankfully has eased up some as we grew up. How ten year olds writing back and forth in pink and purple fonts with an array of emoticons got onto such topics as hell is beyond me, but given that I was not Christian, I remember posing the question to my friend, "So do you think I'm going to hell, then?", that was answered with something like "you're too gawjuz, I lub you" (ironic spelling intended) before the conversation went down another path, but it stuck that the reply I received was neither serious nor direct, so I assumed the answer had to be yes.
In the scope of things, it doesn't really matter to me either way, but what must it feel like going through life knowing that some of the closest people to you are eventually headed for eternal damnation? or is the case as mentioned in the Dawkins article, that they've eased up on the whole hell thing - reinterpreted, or softening the blow for a sticky spot? I'd Google, or better yet ask, but I should rest my mind and body for the yummy Christmas feast storm set to hit my belly in about sixteen hours' time.
Murry Chrustmas, y'all.
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